Letters: Derrick Brooks story refreshing

How refreshing to read the story about Derrick Brooks. So often when football players are interviewed in the fall, they have a hard time stringing five words together to make a sentence.

I hope every coach reads this article to their players and remind them that they do not have to be "dumb jocks." They need a good education to make good decisions, not only for today but for the years, after football, to come.

Thank you for printing this story.

— Faye Robinson

Pensacola

I'm ashamed

I'm ashamed to be a Floridian. Our Republican Party majority legislature and Rick Scott, by refusing to accept no cost Medicaid expansion and health-care insurance exchanges under Obamacare, is costing Florida's poorest citizens their lives.

Death panels? Yep! Scott and his cronies, choosing to let on average four Floridians die daily from failing health, so they can avoid acknowledging that our twice-elected president's idea would be good for most of us.

This administration actually cut Florida's current Medicaid program. Too costly, they claim. What is a single Floridian life worth to the so-called right-to-life conservatives? Medicaid is free to Florida under Obamacare for the first two years, then we have to shoulder 10 percent of the costs with the federal government picking up the rest.

Scott won't answer questions on climate change, but on the health care of our most needy fellow Floridians, his actions speak volumes: let 'em die. Did any of us know we were electing a Republican death panel? We know they are Republican and still we continue to vote for that "R." If they win again, we choose the panelists over the poorest. Why?

— Michael Benesch

Gulf Breeze

Keep Ebola out

Has our president gone mad? Authorizing the importation of Ebola to the USA can't be the product of rational thought.

Millions are being spent and workers toil night and day to keep this deadly disease contained and localized. Yet, with a stroke of his pen, our president brings it home to us. There is something wrong with this equation.